Students turned teachers

(Bill Starling/Press-Register)Apryle Williams asks her third-grade students at John Will Elementary in northwest Mobile questions about "The Ant and the Dove," a fable they had just read about two animals that help each other out. Williams said that when she first enrolled at the University of South Alabama, she wanted to be a doctor. But then, she said she got a calling to teach.

Program gives students shot at teaching

With exaggerated facial expressions, Apryle Williams took on the voices of both an ant and a dove as she read a fable aloud with her third-grade students.

Williams defined new vocabulary words for the students - words such as "perched" and "bellow" - and asked questions about the plot, the characters and the moral of the story.

To help fill gaps left by Mobile County's teacher shortage, Williams worked full-time as a third-grade teacher at John Will Elementary in northwest Mobile during the past school year as she completed her bachelor's degree in education.

Williams and another University of South Alabama student worked in two separate classrooms under the guidance of an experienced teacher who mentored them throughout the year.

What they learned went well beyond a college textbook, Williams said. They learned, for example, how to maintain control of their classes and how to make sure students with varying degrees of abilities all absorb the material.

"This has definitely been eye-opening," said Williams, who said she was studying to become a doctor when she felt a calling to become a teacher instead. "Now I feel confident to stand on my own."

At the beginning of the 2006-07 school year, the mentoring teacher taught the lessons, while Williams observed and helped.

By the end of the year, Williams was doing almost all of the teaching herself, and she was on the Mobile County school system's full-time payroll.

'Students benefit'

"The girls have been great for the students and great for the school," said Chrissy Winsor, Williams' mentor. "I feel like we've gotten two really strong people who are willing to work hard, and that means the students benefit."

As part of a pilot program, four other South Alabama students taught at John Will Elementary. Another 14 worked in pairs at Glendale, Spencer and Eichold-Mertz elementary schools in Mobile County, bringing the total to 20. They worked at schools that, due to high teacher turnover, have been designated as "hard-to-staff."

John Will Elementary Principal Sharron Upton said she's grateful that her school was able to participate in the pilot mentoring program. Had it not, Upton said, she would have hired substitute teachers who aren't certified to teach full-time to staff classrooms.

"It's been so amazing," Upton said. "One hundred and thirty-five kids have benefited from this. I have not seen a downside."

Exposed to hardships

Oftentimes, first-year teachers are assigned to work at inner-city or rural schools that seem less desirable to more experienced teachers.

Exposed to some of the hardships that come along with working in those schools, such as discipline problems and a lack of parental involvement, teachers often leave the profession.

Or they choose to move to better-performing schools as soon as they are able.

Click on graphic to enlarge.

Phil Feldman, an associate dean with the University of South Alabama's College of Education, said the university is working with local school systems to try and stop that vicious cycle.

Doing so, he said, means enacting mentoring programs like the one Williams participated in. The goal is to better prepare college students for what they'll likely face when they take their first jobs.

The mentoring program, which South Alabama officials plan to continue this upcoming year, is not a substitute for the traditional student teaching that all education majors must complete.

Participants must finish a semester of student teaching before they can enroll. Only the top 20 or so students are selected for the mentoring program, and that is based on whether instructors believe they can stand in a classroom completely on their own.

The results so far seem promising, said Andi Kent, a South Alabama professor who headed up the pilot program.

Seventeen of the South Alabama graduates want to teach in the schools they were assigned to, Kent said.

Williams said she plans to return to Will this coming school year.

"I think the fact that they had a successful experience for the year, rather than having what could have been an unsuccessful first year in a hard-to-staff school has made all the difference," Kent said.

South Alabama's enrollment in the College of Education has fluctuated annually between 160 and 240 over the last decade, with 221 students earning degrees in 2006-07.

Feldman said South is still graduating enough teachers to keep up with growth in southwest Alabama and to fill vacancies left by teachers who retire and quit, but it's becoming harder to meet the demand.

"We keep pouring teachers into the bucket, but there's a hole in the bucket," Feldman said.

Largest supplier

USA is the largest supplier of teachers within the Mobile and Baldwin county school systems. South officials say the school has awarded degrees, from bachelor's to doctorates, to about 80 percent of the two districts' teachers.

Locally, Spring Hill College and the University of Mobile also offer teaching degrees, but their graduating classes are much smaller. About 20 Spring Hill College graduates apply to teach in Alabama annually as do about 55 from the University of Mobile, according to state figures.

At a recent state school board meeting, Alabama schools Superintendent Joe Morton praised USA for the work it has done in cooperation with the local school systems.

Still, Gregory Fitch, executive director of the Alabama Commission on Higher Education, said colleges throughout the state have got to do more to encourage students to go into teaching.

He said the state government, which is bringing in more revenue than ever, needs to find ways to compete with other states that are pulling teachers away by paying big signing bonuses or forgiving college loan debt.

While the commission has no statistics on how many Alabama teachers stay in the field, Fitch said he knows turnover is quite high.

The number of people graduating from Alabama universities with bachelor's degrees in education has declined by 18 percent from the 1994-95 school year to 2004-05, according to the Southern Regional Education Board. That's much higher than the national average decline of almost 1 percent.

Fitch said he has experienced teacher turnover firsthand. "My two kids both went to college to be teachers," he said. "One now works in insurance. The other one's in real estate."